High Negation in Subjunctive Conditionals and Polar Questions

Abstract

In certain environments, negation does not anti-license Positive Polarity Items in English and can precede definite noun phrases in German. Instances of negation with these characteristics are labeled 'high' negation. There are two environments where high negation –as opposed to regular, 'low' negation– has been argued to correlate with an additional meaning effect: mandatory counterfactuality in subjunctive conditionals and obligatory epistemic bias in polar questions. Analyses of high negation in the literature have targeted one construction or the other, but not both. The present paper provides an unified analysis of high negation that derives its interpretive effects in both environments.